Q777 Summary

Summary prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.

To read the Original Tape Transcript, click here. To read the Edited Tape Transcript, click here.
Listen to MP3. To return to the Tape Index, click here.

FBI Catalogue           Unidentified Individuals Speaking

FBI preliminary tape identification note: One unlabeled/ “Jack Beam,” “Jack”

Date cues on tape:     Unknown

People named:

Bible verses cited: None

Summary:

(This tape was transcribed by Seriina Covarrubias. The editors gratefully acknowledge her invaluable assistance.)

Jack Beam, a member of Peoples Temple from its earliest days in Indiana, speaks about his memories of those days in a small meeting with two or three other people. Beam talks about Jim Jones’ ability to raise money – which made him popular when he went on the traveling circuit – his faith healing abilities, and, most controversial of all, his insistence that the churches he ministered allow black people, not only to attend services but to sit on the front row. Beam also speaks of some of the attacks against the church, including two sticks of dynamite he found in the church’s boiler room.

Beam also speaks of Jones’ relationships with some of the faith-healers of the day, as well as his social and political activities during the Temple’s Indiana years. He also recounts some of the familiar stories to Temple members, like the aftermath of the deaths of his daughter and several others in a car crash, the ministers who ridiculed or criticized Jones by day and sought out his counsel by night, and Jones’ efforts to integrate numerous facilities in the city and in general becoming the embodiment of Principle even then.

Beyond the usual problems of having a single microphone trying to capture numerous voices in the same room ­– sometimes speaking at the same time – the tape is compromised by poor audio recording, and parts of unintelligible. There may be as many as four women interviewing Beam at one point or another – including Marceline Jones, who often chimes in to fill in a gap or confirms what Beam has just said, and Beam’s wife Rheavianna – and one voice is deep enough that it has been labeled as “Male,” but the others are labeled as generic women’s voices.

FBI Summary:

Date of transcription: April 9, 1979

In connection with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the assassination of U.S. Congressman LEO J. RYAN at Port Kaituma, Guyana, South America, on November 18, 1978, a tape recording was obtained. This tape recording was located in Jonestown, Guyana, South America, and was turned over to U.S. Officials in Guyana and subsequently transported to the United States.

On March 19, 1979, Special Agent (name deleted) reviewed the tape numbered 1B62 Number 94. This tape was found to contain the following:

Side one is a discussion among two to three persons about the Pentacostal [Pentecostal] Church in Indiana and JIM JONES’s early involvment [involvement] there as a “healer”.

Side two is blank.

Nothing was contained thereon which was considered to be of evidentiary nature or beneficial to the investigation of Congressman RYAN.

Differences with FBI Summary:

Side 2 has audio. Otherwise, the summary is accurate and meets the FBI’s purposes.     

Tape originally posted February 2021.